If more engineers are to enter the labor market, it is a must that more need to apply. From the students' perspective, there is good reason to do that when you have leadENG to look forward to. Jonas Lindegaard Mikkelsen, who is a 3rd semester student in Engineering says:

"The LeadENG projects are different from regular teaching because together with students from other engineering programs we have to solve some very specific and challenging tasks. It can be frustrating along the way, but it's also fun and really gives a lot"

Jonas Lindegaard Mikkelsen's leadENG project involved building a Vertical-axis wind turbine. It was a demanding project where he both used his own expertise and learned a lot about project management, development in teams and communication across professional boundaries:

"We were nine groups from the faculty's departments who collaborated to develop the wind turbine. Some worked with the wings, others with the foundation, with the gearbox, with the generator and so on. It was very self-governing and without regular teaching. We set up a steering group with students from all nine groups who planned the work, shared knowledge and involved the supervisors when needed.”

The great independence made everyone take more responsibility and it also meant that it felt really great when we managed to get the wind turbine up and running shortly before the deadline.

The students' solutions at the centre

In line with Jonas Lindegaard Mikkelsen's experience, the core of the leadENG projects is the interdisciplinary collaboration between students from the university's various engineering programs on concrete physical products – for example a wind turbine, a material for storing electricity, a hydrogen car or sustainable biomass.

"It is fundamentally difficult to collaborate across disciplines. Each study program has its own study program. But with leadENG and not least a large group of enthusiastic supervisors, we have developed a fantastic platform to make this happen in practice - and that is truly innovative", points out prodean Olav Geil and emphasizes that it is both to the delight of students and teachers:

"We have experienced that the agile and transversal collaboration on physical products is motivating for everyone involved, and that it breathes new life into the methods and theories for the students. We get much closer to how one should actually use one's professional skills after the education", he elaborates and emphasizes that it is therefore absolutely crucial that the university's partner companies help define which tasks the leadENG student projects will be about.

PBL is the cornerstone

The LeadENG student projects are methodologically based on problem-based learning (PBL), which has been a living part of the education at Aalborg University since the university's foundation in 1974. Olav Geil hopes that the prize for the leadENG student projects can help to provide PBL-based education more attention in Denmark, Europe and the rest of the world.

"The purpose of PBL-based teaching is to put the academic content into a concrete and practical context. It might sound trite, but it's not! Many new graduates spend a lot of time in their first job figuring out how their skills can come into play. To translate their expertise from learning to application, from university to the workplace. The participants in the leadENG student projects are already getting used to that, and we need a lot more of that", says Olav Geil.